• Mariagrazia Di Luca, Giuseppe Maccari, and Riccardo Nifosì.
• NEST, Istituto Nanoscienze-CNR and Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy.
• Pathog Dis. 2014 Apr 1; 70 (3): 257-70.

AbstractThe treatment for biofilm infections is particularly challenging because bacteria in these conditions become refractory to antibiotic drugs. The reduced effectiveness of current therapies spurs research for the identification of novel molecules endowed with antimicrobial activities and new mechanisms of antibiofilm action. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) have been receiving increasing attention as potential therapeutic agents, because they represent a novel class of antibiotics with a wide spectrum of activity and a low rate in inducing bacterial resistance. Over the past decades, a large number of naturally occurring AMPs have been identified or predicted from various organisms as effector molecules of the innate immune system playing a crucial role in the first line of defense. Recent studies have shown the ability of some AMPs to act against microbial biofilms, in particular during early phases of biofilm development. Here, we provide a review of the antimicrobial peptides tested on biofilms, highlighting their advantages and disadvantages for prophylactic and therapeutic applications. In addition, we describe the strategies and methods for de novo design of potentially active AMPs and discuss how informatics and computational tools may be exploited to improve antibiofilm effectiveness. © 2014 Federation of European Microbiological Societies. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. All rights reserved.

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